Consultant: Project BRAVE not a cure-all for crime

Consultant Jim Fealy, who has been advising the city on its new violent crime reduction program, the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination Project, or Project BRAVE, spent two days here this week meeting with law enforcement officials and the faith-based community leaders who will be central figures in implementing the program. While Fealy is optimistic the Operation Ceasefire–style program can be as effective in reducing violent crime in Baton Rouge as it has been in other cities, he cautions against having unrealistic expectations. “This model of policing will not address poverty, poor parenting, under-education or social injustice,” he says. “I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know anyone who does.” What Fealy says experts do know how to do is use multiple levels of deterrence—instead of just arrest and prosecution—to reduce violence in the 70805 ZIP code, which contains 13.5% of the city’s population but accounts for 30% of its homicides, Mayor Kip Holden’s office says. While the program will initially target that area of north Baton Rouge, Fealy says it will have a ripple effect throughout the community. “You start at 70805 and make the problem manageable, and then you bite off another chunk and another,” he says. “And in my experience, when you do that, word travels fast and the chronic repeat-offenders change the way they do business.” Fealy is the former police chief of High Point, N.C., where Operation Ceasefire was successfully implemented, the city-parish says. —Stephanie Riegel